As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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The ruins are beautiful! Too funny that you ended up with 3 meals at McDs. I can imagine that is rough to see family you care about so seldom. Sorry that leaving is causing sadness.
Interesting arrangement with the car and the dining table in the same shot! Seems to work, though, and it's nice to have everyone at the table together. It must be sad to leave everyone when you all get on so well and enjoy each others' company so much. How wonderful to have such loving in-laws!
The ruins are beautiful! Too funny that you ended up with 3 meals at McDs. I can imagine that is rough to see family you care about so seldom. Sorry that leaving is causing sadness.
It was funny, I do all the ordering normally because DH always messes it up somehow, so to see him do it when he spoke the language made us laugh. It gets harder each trip as the family is getting older.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
Interesting arrangement with the car and the dining table in the same shot! Seems to work, though, and it's nice to have everyone at the table together. It must be sad to leave everyone when you all get on so well and enjoy each others' company so much. How wonderful to have such loving in-laws!
It is nice to have such a large space to get together, the family are really nice and caring.
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Originally Posted by chezp
Oh my goodness, that dessert looked and sounded heavenly. In fact, the whole spread looked amazing.
I do have the recipe but its in Portuguese and we are having some issues translating it, I believe it calls for 12 eggs, I really should give it a try.
Woke up early at 6:30 and finished the last minute packing, before saying a tearful goodbye to the Tios at 8:00. We headed to Lisbon using the toll highway and arrived at hotel Fenix Lisboa at 9:30. My DH does not like to drive in Lisbon. It is crowded and parking is difficult, so once we arrived at the hotel the car company came and picked up the car. Our hotel was located right on a Metro stop so access to everywhere we wanted to go was very easy. The hotel is located in the Amoreiras area of Lisbon, across the street from Edward the VII park.
Even this early in the morning our room was ready, so after we checked in we headed to our room to unpack. We then went down and caught the metro and headed to Colombo mall, where our first stop was the Disney Store. We no longer have a Disney Store in Winnipeg, so I was excited to look around. They did not have a lot of items for adults, but I did manage to find a polo jumping Tigger. By this time we were hungry so we had lunch at the food court. DH had fries, rice, beans, salad and chicken breast with a beer. I had fries, rice, chicken wrapped in bacon and lemonade, it was good for food court food. We wandered around the mall and I bought some more cork items, we then headed back to the hotel. I bought an ice cream just outside the hotel and we dropped off our packages in the room
Last time we were in Lisbon we had wanted to do a double decker bus tour, but we had my DM with us and at that point in the trip she was too tired so we chose not to do it. Both my DH and I said next trip it is a must do, so we headed across from the hotel to catch the red line tour. They provide you with headsets so you can pick the language to listen to the tour, we were lucky to grab sets on the top of the bus and we headed out for an hour and 45 minute tour of Lisbon. We really enjoyed the tour, as we were able to see a lot of Lisbon and figure out future things to do.
Touring around Lisbon
After the tour we headed to Hard Rock Café for dinner, it was our first time eating at a Hard Rock Café and we really enjoyed it. I had twisted chicken mac and cheese and a pinkled tink drink, DH had chicken marsala with asparagus and spaghetti, and electric tea as his beverage. I finished off my meal with cheesecake and DH had crème brulee. It was a very good meal, although it did sit heavy in our stomachs as mostly we had been eating Portuguese style foods that are not in sauces and seem lighter. We headed back to the room and called it a night.
The bus tour looks interesting! Your meal looks great too! Sad you had to say goodbye to the Tios. It looks like a very nice room where you are at now.
Your hotel in Lisbon looks so nice! Good idea to ditch the car while your in the city and avoid the parking charges. I love taking bus tours my first day in a city to get an over-view.
All of the food you've shown looks wonderful, but you got my mouth watering with the lemon cake! Sorry your time with family has come to an end, but it does look like you all had a wonderful visit.
The bus tour of Lisbon looks like it was a great idea.
The bus tour of Lisbon sounds wonderful! Both meals looked delicious.
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Originally Posted by dutchdisneyfamily
The bus tour looks interesting! Your meal looks great too! Sad you had to say goodbye to the Tios. It looks like a very nice room where you are at now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lauriep
Your hotel in Lisbon looks so nice! Good idea to ditch the car while your in the city and avoid the parking charges. I love taking bus tours my first day in a city to get an over-view.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shazza
All of the food you've shown looks wonderful, but you got my mouth watering with the lemon cake! Sorry your time with family has come to an end, but it does look like you all had a wonderful visit.
The bus tour of Lisbon looks like it was a great idea.
The food was great, and if you like seafood Portugal is the place to go. We really like staying at this hotel as the location is awesome. We do another tour in the next update, it is a great way to get an overview of the city.
Woke up at 6:30 and thought about our youngest DD, as it was her 20th birthday today, but it was too early to call her. We headed down to breakfast and it was packed. They had a really good amount of food: buns, cold cuts, cheese, eggs, cereals, baked beans, and fresh fruit. We filled up our plates and enjoyed our breakfast.
We left the hotel at 8:30 and walked to the Elevador de Santa Justa, in the Baixa section of Lisbon. It opened in 1901 and was constructed to link downtown Baixa with Largo do Carmo. It is 147 feet tall, and was designed by Raul Mesnier de Ponsard, a disciple of Gustave Eiffel. It really has impressive views over the city.
Once back at the bottom we shopped in a few of the little shops in the area, finding a nice orange rooster to go with our more traditional Portuguese rooster. The legend of the rooster is from the town of Barcelos in the northern part of Portugal. Supposedly a Santiago pilgrim, wrongly accused of theft, said that the judge’s roast chicken dinner would stand up and crow if he was sentenced to hang. Sure enough, the cock crowed and the pilgrim was set free. The traditional roosters are red and black ceramic with a bright colourful breast and tail section.
We then caught the metro to DH’s other Aunts and Uncles’ apartment. In November 1967 flash floods hit Lisbon and many people were flooded out of their apartments. DH’s aunt, uncle and their young daughter had to climb up on top of the apartment to stay alive and await rescue. Since their home was destroyed the government relocated them into a new apartment which they were eventually able to buy, and they have lived there ever since. It is very small, I do not know how three of them lived here for all those years, and I am used to small spaces as our house is only 745 sq. feet. They have a small bathroom, one bedroom with room for a dresser and bed, a living area with a couch and dining table and a small kitchen. Somehow they make it work. They also have a much bigger house in our village, but due to advanced age and DH’s uncle having Alzheimer’s they mostly stay in Lisbon.
Tios are in the middle, not sure who the older man on the end is.
Tios’ daughter and son-in-law joined us for lunch, we had pork, potatoes, salad and pudding flan. We chatted and then headed out around 1:30, Tia had given us presents for our girls and two bottles of Port.
We dropped everything off at the hotel and then headed out to do another double decker bus tour. This time we did the blue line. Our ticket purchase yesterday allowed us to tour for a 24-hour period.
Pizza delivery
After the tour we headed for dinner around 6:15, walking to a restaurant called Bon Jardim. We passed a lot of other restaurants and they sure worked hard to convince you to eat at their establishment. The waiters would stop you and show you the menu, they definitely tried hard and spoke English, German, and French. Since we had a destination in mind we just passed everyone by. We sat outside and had probably one of the best meals of our trip: olives, bread, salad, fries, a whole chicken, beer and water. They had a side of hot sauce, which you can brush on your chicken, and it was very hot. We shared a unique dessert, it was 3 scoops of ice cream topped with some type of pudding, and it was delicious.
We slowly walked back to our room and relaxed for the evening. We also stopped to check out the gift shop in the hotel and they had a sale on their cork items so I bought some jewelry.
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Too funny that you ended up with 3 meals at McDs. I can imagine that is rough to see family you care about so seldom. Sorry that leaving is causing sadness.
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In fact, the whole spread looked amazing. 
Both meals looked delicious. 
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